


Mage Pride

by mjules



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-26
Updated: 2011-12-26
Packaged: 2017-10-28 04:08:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/303571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mjules/pseuds/mjules
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Kirkwall Feastday Gift Exchange never goes quite as planned when Garrett Hawke is involved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mage Pride

**Author's Note:**

> For my beloved friends who have made this fandom experience such a joy. Happy holidays!

After Varric’s well of disappearing ink and the little stitched-together albatross with X’s for eyes that Isabela threw at Hawke’s head, Anders was dreading his Feastday gift.

Fenris had received socks, Merrill a hand-held mirror, and Aveline a pot of marigolds (“I knew you didn’t have anywhere to keep a goat,” Hawke had said over his shoulder as she’d thrown him out of her office). Anders didn’t want to know what poor Bethany had gotten in the Circle tower, but at least her situation guaranteed her brother wouldn’t give her something like _On the Care and Feeding of Maleficarum_. Anders winced; with his luck, that would be what was waiting for him at home.

He took the steps from Darktown slowly, trying to prepare himself. A bag of catnip, perhaps, or a collection of fresh new bandages. Surely it wouldn’t be anything to do with Templars or tranquility; even Hawke wouldn’t risk pranking _Justice_.

By the time he stood in front of the Hawke estate, hand on the doorknob, his stomach was a knot of dread.

The inside of the house seemed normal enough. Nothing jumped out to frighten him, no roguish traps set for his feet. The dog lay in front of the fireplace as usual, and Bodahn and Orana greeted him in their respective manners as if nothing were amiss. Anders glanced at Sandal, but the boy just smiled back at him and waved. If he knew Hawke’s surprise, he was good at keeping secrets.

Anders knew instinctively that the gift would be in the bedroom, but he checked the library, the kitchen, and the bathroom first, just to be thorough. Finally there was nowhere left to go except the master bedroom, and Anders stood at the foot of the stairs for long moments, hand gripping the banister where Isabela had carved a likeness of her breasts.

“Is something wrong, Master Anders?” Bodahn called, and Anders cleared his throat.

“No, no. Thank you, Bodahn.” He took the first two steps, paused, and turned back to the house dwarf. “Do you happen to know if Hawke is home?”

“Oh, you know Messere Hawke,” Bodahn said. “Always comin’ and goin’ without ever telling anyone.”

Anders frowned. “So that’s a yes.” The dwarf spluttered; he couldn’t lie for shit. “Thank you, Bodahn.”

Well, knowing Hawke would be there to see his reaction eased a bit of Anders’s anxiousness, and he climbed the rest of the stairs with purpose. He flung open the door to the bedroom with a saucy flourish; no need letting Hawke know he was nervous.

Whatever he’d expected to find, it wasn’t Hawke sitting on the edge of the bed in his finery, golden staff leaning beside him.

“You’re late,” he said, a cheerful lilt to his voice that wasn’t matched by his eyes. “Did they add a few more steps between here and Darktown when I wasn’t looking?”

Anders arched an eyebrow but leaned back against the door, staring at the staff with its red bow tied around it. The top was an intricately carved figure; from where Anders was standing, it looked like a naked woman. Was that Andraste? Perhaps that was the joke; perhaps the staff was design to channel a certain kind of magic -- or at least to earn its wielder some long, appraising stares.

“You know those sneaky stair builders,” Anders tried. “Can’t look a way for a moment. One minute you’re haggling with a Hightown merchant, and the next minute you realize it takes two more steps to get to the Lowtown market. Next thing you know, they’ll be trying to convince you people live in the sewers.”

“Mm.” Hawke still hadn’t looked at him, jaw set as he stared into the fireplace, and Anders couldn’t help  shifting his weight, making the feathers on his coat rustle as loudly as he could without seeming obvious. None of it drew Hawke’s attention.

“Is this about that incident with the peanut butter the other day? Because I promise you it was entirely innocent, not at all what it--”

“I got you something.”

Anders’s gaze darted to the staff again, and he swallowed. “Ah, that’s right. Today’s Feastday, isn’t it? Well, as it happens, I got you something too, but I thought I’d wait until after dark to give it to you.” He tried on a leer, but Hawke still wasn’t looking at him. In fact, now that Anders observed more closely, he seemed tense, hands clasped between his knees, knuckles almost white.

Well, unless the damn thing was going to come to life and do a spicy shimmy, the staff didn’t seem to be very threatening. Anders crossed the room to the bed and sat down gingerly on the edge of the mattress, keeping the naked lady on her golden pole between them.

“Well, all right then. You first.”

Hawke took a deep breath, and that alone was enough to let Anders know something was up. Absent were the showy flourishes, the witticisms, and quick, insincere smiles, the emotional sleight of hand that kept everything at arm’s length, away from all the vulnerable spots in his armor. Instead, he silently reached for the staff, holding it with both hands. Anders swallowed an inappropriate joke and focused on waiting.

“We didn’t bring much from Ferelden. Most of it was too heavy to carry, too hard to gather from the house. The Blight wasn’t going to wait for us to decide which mementos to pack.” His fingers skimmed the textured surface reverently, and he cast a glance up at the figure at the top. “Carver, of all people, grabbed this.”

He turned and laid the staff across Anders’s thighs.

“It was my father’s.” Finally, for the first time since he’d entered the room, Hawke met Anders’s eyes. “I want you to have it.”

Anders slowly placed his hands over Hawke’s on the staff, already feeling the thrum of arcane energy humming through the wood.

“If things were…different, if we were different people, I would give you my grandmother’s wedding ring or my mother’s locket. But we are who we are, and…you should have this.”

Anders caught his breath against the sudden upwelling of feeling, and the only thing he could find to say was, “Thank you, love.”

Garrett cleared his throat and looked away, slipping his hands out from under Anders’s and clasping them between his knees again. Anders could see the walls falling back into place, could feel the distance as it fell between them. He smiled and took a moment to stare down at the staff balanced on his knees, the graceful figure at the top. He was sure it was Andraste now, her body spread out against a corona of flame, the moment before she succumbed to the fire.

Live with what you have in the time you are given, it seemed to say, and hold onto it with both hands. An apostate’s creed, from one free mage to another.

Anders set it aside carefully and reached into his coat pocket. He could feel Garrett’s brittleness, and he pulled out a small pot with a wax seal.

“And to think, all I got you was a jar of ointment.”

Garrett gave him a sidelong glance, his shoulders relaxing as he realized Anders wasn’t going to herd him into an uncomfortably candid conversation.

“Are you sure you don’t have me mixed up with someone else?” he asked. “A certain seneschal, perhaps?”

Anders just held the pot out and waited, mouth curving up at the corners as Hawke’s natural curiosity took over.

He took the pot out of Anders’s hand and read the label, his eyebrows disappearing under a fringe of dark hair. “Self-heating lubricant. Well, well.”

“It’s from Antiva,” Anders said smugly as the spark in Hawke’s eyes kindled a wicked smile.

“ _Kinky._ ” Hawke loomed over him, and Anders took the hint, lying back on the bed and pulling Hawke down to him.

“This from the man who gave me his father’s staff with a naked lady sitting on-- _mmph_.”

 _Happy Feastday to all, and to all a_ very _good night._


End file.
